2 men indicted in deaths of Indian migrant family at Canada-US border

A federal grand jury has indicted Steve Shand and Harshkumar Patel over their alleged role in trying to illegally bring a group of Indian nationals across the Canadian border into the United States in a case that led to a family of four freezing to death.

The deaths of Jagdish Patel, 39, Vaishaliben Patel, 37, and their two children Vihangi, 11, and Dharmik, 3, in January 2022, spurred sprawling investigations into the illicit immigration pipeline to the US from their home state of Gujarat in western India.

Authorities discovered the four bodies frozen in Emerson, Manitoba, and found five other Indian immigrants on foot and two more in a van driven by Shand in a rural area between Lancaster, Minnesota, and Pembina, North Dakota.

Shand, of Deltona, Florida, was scheduled to face trial next Monday in Fergus Falls on two counts of illegally bringing in and transporting undocumented immigrants, but the long-delayed proceedings were postponed again on Friday.

The seven-count superseding indictment filed this week includes far more extensive criminal allegations against Shand and says he acted with Harshkumar Patel, who was arrested in Chicago last month and is now in the Sherburne county jail in Elk River, Minnesota. Gujarati police have also arrested a series of smugglers in connection with the case in India.

Lawyers for both men could not immediately be reached for comment.

The grand jury found that Shand and Patel conspired to bring and transport unauthorised immigrants to the US, causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy. The indictment said the pair brought or tried to bring them, aided and abetted their journey, and that Shand and Patel transported them for commercial advantage and private financial gain.

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